Alaska : Mom, son find tusks 22 years apart

A man who was having little luck catching salmon decided to look for fossils over the weekend and found a woolly mammoth tusk in the same Alaska location where his mother found one 22 years ago.

Harrelson, who grew up in White Mountain, Alaska, found the tusk in a bend of the nearby Fish River.

Harrelson says he has a dim memory of his mother’s discovery when he was 3 years old.

Harrelson now works in Nome but was in White Mountain over the weekend.

After fishing for salmon, he decided to look for fossils, and spotted the 12-foot-long tusk.

Tusks of the extinct wooly mammoth are 12,000 to 400,000 years old.

Harrelson says he spotted the base of the mammoth tusk under a stump.

White Mountain is a village of 200 about 63 miles east of Nome.

Agencies/Canadajournal